


The Lives of Saints - Part II

by Persephone



Series: The Lives of Saints [2]
Category: Boondock Saints (Movies)
Genre: Boston, Brotherhood, Brothers, Coming of Age, Falling In Love, M/M, Passion, Prison Sex, Rites of Passage, Sibling Incest, Twincest, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 05:46:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone/pseuds/Persephone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Last three of six vignettes narrating incidents in the lives of the brothers, from ages twenty through thirty-six.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lives of Saints - Part II

**The Blame on Him  
~*~**

  


At twenty they went through a period of adjustment.

They had made it to America, and Murphy hated it.

Hated everything about it. He hated the people, the city, the weather. But most of all, Murphy said, he hated the way it made him _feel._

He’d had no idea what Murphy was talking about, and really, couldn’t have cared less after all he went through to get them here. Until one day when it suddenly dawned on him.

Murphy was homesick.

Sick for Ireland, sick for the green plains, sick for the wild-haired, pretty girls. Sick for everything.

And loudly so.

So he, of course, was the one to bear the brunt of it.

For two months he had endured, and last night had been the culmination of it.

Murphy was shit-faced at the bar. Drunk almost into a stupor. He didn’t believe he had ever seen Murph so wasted, so lost and incoherent, warbling on about all kinds of rubbish, mouthing off at their American counterparts as though they were in some sort of competition for who were the better people.

Since arriving in the States, they’d found good work—as there was plenty for young men who weren’t afraid of it, even without papers; and they’d found good living space—a single flat with a nice living area where they put their beds, a kitchen and a bath, and they had more prospects for a better life with each passing day.

But that had nothing to do with anything.

Murphy was yelling about the people: the way they didn’t speak proper English, even though they insisted on using it for mass instead of Latin; the way they lacked knowledge about anything to do with Ireland, even though they were _right now_ piping music from Ireland over the sound system; the utter, relentless stupidity of everybody, even though he and his brother had been told they needed to come to Boston, as it was all an Irishman could want and need in America. Well, they could keep their fucken dumbass city. Must’ve been all the rejects from Ireland who had settled here anyway.

And on and on it went. For two months and counting.

Murphy’s hurt was almost too much to bear, his head splitting night after night from the pain flaring from his brother’s heart.

He himself was quite inebriated, but he’d kept alert by force of will. He had to, when Murphy was so openly courting disaster.

Murphy finally had one too many shots of whiskey and pushed off his stool, pointing a finger at a group of university students with whom he had been arguing. Just as he expected Murphy to throw a punch, Murphy instead dropped in a heap to the floor.

He staggered to his feet and kept the students away, bending over to retrieve his despondent brother. Hauling Murphy to his feet, he pulled him out of the bar, holding off his own tears until they were out in the safety of the street.

And there they had their fight. He with a fistful of Murphy’s jersey in his grip, holding Murphy upright for his berating, and Murphy with his wet eyes, unsteady feet, and sobbing words.

Murphy’s glinting eyes had turned black as pieces of onyx, leaking tears, staring a fault into him.

A fault which he could not understand. Until Murphy started to talk.

It was _his_ fault that Murphy was so miserable. _His_ fault that he couldn’t sleep well at night and carried so much unhappiness inside him. And because of Connor he wished they had stayed in Ireland after all.

He had hardly been able to believe his ears. He’d stared incredulously at his brother.

 _Murphy_ was the one who had wanted to leave Ireland.

They had had a good life, and good work hauling cargo at the factory of a friend of their Da’s. They could have gone on from there to anywhere in their lives. But Murphy had wanted to leave.

For nearly four years he had tried everything, quite literally everything, to keep Murphy in Ireland. Because he knew it would make their Ma miserable for both of them to leave, because he didn’t know what was in America that couldn’t be found in Ireland.

But Murphy had been unhappy. A wanderlust had settled in his brother’s heart and it had eaten away at his own. And so one day in the week they turned twenty, Murphy had dragged him down to the the docks, and when he had come upon the great ships that sailed to faraway places, his head had filled with the vision of what Murphy could see of their future. Two weeks later they had left Ireland.

And now Murphy was fucken sorry.

He grabbed Murphy by the collar and headed down the dark street, in the direction of their flat. Murphy tried to shrug him off time and again, but he held on fast.

They reached their building and by now Murphy had given up trying to break his hold and had simply kept up stumbling after him, holding on to his waist, sniffing back tears as they went along.

Inside the flat, he deposited Murphy on his mattress, kicking shut the door while Murphy collapsed on the unadorned mattress and instantly passed out.

He flopped on his own mattress, and, wiping his eyes, forced his eyes to close and his mind to shut up.

He opened his eyes a few hours later. To an over-bright, sun lit room.

It was Sunday. And especially because it was really the only thing they had left that reminded them of home, they had to go to Mass.

Even though the thought of sitting upright seemed alien and evil to him at that moment, it was precisely what he did, and reached over to poke at Murphy.

Murphy was dead asleep. And though the act of moving Murphy without his assistance was equally horrible to him right now, he did it. Summoning all his strength, he got them both into the bathroom.

There was no proper shower stall, only a bathtub with a shower head above it. Into this porcelain container he first lowered himself, then pulled his brother in after him. Reaching forward to turn on the nob, he hollered a curse as the spray of ice-cold water hit them, freezing his hair follicles from his head down to his nuts.

He drank as much water from his cupped hands as he could with Murphy lodged firmly between his legs, still fast asleep despite the spray of cold water.

Slipping his arms around Murphy’s chest, he hauled Murphy higher up in the tub, steadying him as his head rolled to one side. He was shivering from the cold, but Murphy seemed impervious. Laying back with a heavy sigh, he settled in and held onto Murphy.

He felt like shit warmed over.

_If we had just stayed in Ireland._

As he began dozing off he reminded himself they could not be late for mass.

But the last thing that happened before he slipped into sleep was a small voice inside him telling him something secret.

When he opened his eyes, the water had long been spilling over.

They had probably missed morning mass.

He stirred to reach forward and turn the knob, but Murphy suddenly moved, reaching forward himself to unhurriedly twist off the flow of water.

He hadn’t been aware that Murphy was awake. Murphy said nothing, only rested backward on his chest and let out a breath.

Then after a moment he stood up and climbed out of the tub. Silently, he reached for a towel and left the bathroom.

He stayed a few minutes longer. Then he too climbed out and toweled off, going out to living area to pull on the first jersey and pair of jeans he came upon.

Murphy was nowhere in sight.

On the stove sat a kettle, and next to it on the counter, a mug. His mug. The one he used to drink coffee.

He went over and peered inside, and to his surprise found that there was a quantity of instant coffee sitting at the bottom.

He had taken up drinking coffee and reading American literature — Kraft Foods and John Steinbeck — as it had seemed the thing to do.

Murphy had made fun of him over it, for being so fucken obvious, and had certainly never, in the two months of their new lives, made him a mug of anything.

He picked up the mug and re-entered the living area. Then he sat down on the one table on which they kept everything from their books to their TV set.

And, here he still sat.

Murphy had been gone awhile.

His coffee had cooled, and so had his mind. And in that quiet that followed, a thought returned to him.

It was that thing that had come to him right before he dozed off in the bathtub that morning. This time the thought came clear and succinct. And it was that Murphy was right.

He carried a fault in this their transition, though he might not have been aware of it.

Murphy was perfectly happy to be in America, China, or anywhere in between. It was _he_ who had never wanted to leave Ireland, and it was _his_ sense of displacement that Murphy was acting out.

It had always been this way. He felt, and Murphy acted out. For them there was no short cut through the woods.

And just as Murphy had never been angry at him for quietly feeling this way, he should not be angry at Murphy for loudly acting that way.

And when he finished this thought, he finally felt at peace.

Time passed, and Murphy still hadn’t come back.

Just as he was contemplating going out to look for Murphy the door to the flat opened, and facing it, he watched Murphy stomp in.

Murphy was holding a stack of what looked like calling cards in his hand, which he tossed on his mattress.

Murphy kept coming, stomping with his head down until he reached him. Without breaking stride he came and settled between his legs, and put his arms around him.

One arm around his waist and the other around his shoulder, Murphy held onto him as if the world had lost its center of gravity and he was all there was holding it together.

He kissed Murphy’s neck, just as Murphy buried his head into his shoulder. Murphy’s hair was still damp from their bath.

Time passed, he felt his still-chilled body warming up. He spread his legs even more and made Murphy settle into him. Murphy’s chest, stomach, and crotch, especially his crotch, sealed against his body, and he closed his eyes.

Murphy pulled up his jersey, rubbing his knuckles against the warm skin on his back, rubbing them over the rises and dips, sliding them into the small of his back. His other hand on his shoulder kept gripping and releasing his jersey.

His pounding heartbeats echoed his brother’s.

It seemed superfluous when Murphy began talking to him, telling him how sorry he was, because he could feel it in every heartbeat.

But Murphy’s words were like brands on his body, tattoos on his heart.

Then he realized that Murphy wasn’t speaking.

Slowly, he put down his mug. He wrapped his arms around his brother and pulled him as close as he possibly could.

That day they didn’t make it to Mass. But they had finally made it to America.

 

  
**The Other Side  
~*~**   


  


At the age of twenty-seven their lives finally gelled.

They had a good place, a good job, and a good relationship with Ma.

They woke up in the morning with no trouble in their hearts, and went to sleep at night in nothing less than the same condition.

Their arguments got more childish, but their fights got better—harder, faster, ending more and more with them fucking for their release.

And then there would be days like this, when no matter how much they tried, and try they did, they could not pull out of the need to treat each other with tenderness.

When Murphy would find him sitting in the living room, come at him until he was pressed up against the wall, and Murphy would ask him what he wanted, and he would say _this_ , and Murphy would say _aye._

Days when he couldn’t think of a snide remark to make all afternoon, when each movement Murphy made was lovely, pure and true, designed to give him pleasure until they both accomplished their goal of perfectly destroying each other.

Hours when Murphy would take pleasure in the feeling of being held onto like he was the anchor in the world, when the only words he was able to utter to his brother were chanted words of thanks, like to a deity whose intersession on his behalf was changing his life.

Moments when thoughts of them in their awkward adolescence—the first times; the mistakes they’d made; the fears they’d lived through—melted away like butter on warm toast.

He gripped harder on Murphy's collar as Murphy used his devastating tongue on him, as Murphy did all those things he wanted him to do, but so many times got lost in the arguments and missed being verbalized.

He opened his mouth and exhaled air until he could say his brother’s name. Murphy’s tongue had began to do its slow-dance across his skin.

He breathed in slow efforts, the flames of a wood-hungry fire beginning to lap at him, spreading out from his chest where it had already consumed his heart. He knew that the end was near, and he didn’t want it to stop.

He gripped tighter on his brother’s collar, helplessly calling out his name until the last minute when he had to let go, when he had to grip the back of Murphy’s head.

Murphy was rocking into him, gracelessly slipping out of control, and he was caught between Murphy and the unyielding hardness of the concrete wall.

On days like this the world was delicious beyond compare.

 

  


**Connor MacManus  
~*~**  


  


At thirty-six he fell in love with his brother.

In prison of all places.

Connor had always been his saviour, his anchor and center in more ways than he could count. But in prison Connor’s shinning armour glinted night and day before his eyes, and he embarked upon a course of counting.

He had always been the wild one. But in truth it was because he felt at sea without his brother’s guiding star.

And he had always been the testy one, getting into fights and starting them, because it was he who pushed their existence, tested the outer boundaries of their capabilities.

And in prison Connor found, and then became, the guardian of those places.

They had had one of those non-trials, a plea bargain by the prosecutor, because they were a celebrity case, and because it had apparently been difficult to ensure a group of jurors who would not be tampered by the mob, who would not therefore be pre-made avenues of appeal for the defense.

So the district attorney and the media-loving lawyers who had handled their defense came to an amicable agreement: Eight years.

And after their discharge from the local county jail infirmary, they had been moved to a federal penitentiary.

It was while at the infirmary that they had gotten word of Agent Bloom’s plot to break them out of prison. But only after they had served 12 months.

Of which they had so far done eight. It was fine by him, fine by Connor.

He was not bothered by prison. Not even a little bit. Their Da had done twenty-five years, and had come out with the same amount of sanity with which he had gone in.

And he had brought out with him these pearls of wisdom: That if you knew that evil was all around you, there was no burden to be carried. Each day became a chance to do the work for which they were known.

And upon their arrival some had tried, wanting to test the policy under which the Saints of South Boston operated.

For them, they had all the time and interest in the world.

But the greatest enemy, their Da had told them, was not the other inmates, but oneself.

The self that tried to fill you with despair—a true lack hope that few had ever experienced on the outside. A lack of hope for a future.

But that was the part which was easiest to conquer. For all around him he saw men who appeared tough, but who in the darkness of night wept bitter tears of anguish and terror.

There was no such darkness in his life. He had Connor.

Across the yard inmates were engaged in all forms of activity. It was the hours for exercise. He was engaged in a game of chess, and Connor was standing by the fence, surrounded by his usual crowd of wannabes and worshipers.

Connor stood still as stone in the cold air, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his faraway stare hooded and transfixed, a burning cigarette hanging from his chapped lips.

Someone was holding something out to him. Connor didn’t so much as twitch.

Connor, who couldn’t shut it on the outside if his physical welfare depended on it, barely spoke a word in prison.

He was still Connor—spiked hair, scruff of beard and goatee, intelligent blue eyes.

But he was also different now. His chest was wider and his arms bigger, his features more rugged than even living out in the open country in Ireland had caused.

He had become a guardian, the duty to which he gave one hundred percent of his concentration.

When they had first arrived, the guards had separated them to different cells. He had thought his brain would fry to a crisp in that terrible first night, in which his mind had refused to stop howling long enough for him to think of what to do. He had stayed sitting up in his bed, staring blindly across to the other side where they had put Connor.

The next day, by evening, his cellmate had come down with an extremely rare form of food poisoning, one that would require the man’s stay at the hospital for three months at least.

That evening Connor had approached one of the friendlier guards, and with a calm, straightforward demeanor, had suggested that they house him and his brother together, for such expedient reasons as having a cell out of which there would never be any trouble.

The guard had stared at Connor, and Connor had stared back, showing he had nothing to hide, until the guard had nodded and told Connor to move on, and that night Connor was moved into his cell.

That and each night after that they slept in one bed. It was against regulations but they did it anyway, separating only in the morning.

Each night he slept on top of Connor, partially blocking his body with his own. Outside, Connor would have shoved him off sometime during the night, here he woke up exactly as he had gone to bed.

Connor secured them the better job—inside the machine shop, where they could acquire skill instead of washing clothes, a job everyone else wanted.

He got them the small things that made life more normal— cigarettes, trashy magazines, and alcohol. Plenty of alcohol.

Connor was always ahead of the game, the threats, the danger. For him it _was_ a game that had to be won.

In prison they did not argue, and they did not fight. They never took their eyes off each other, and they saved their words for when they were alone.

Mornings they attended mass, in the evenings they spent their time in the library among books.

And when something went wrong, when a physical altercation was called for, he was there to make it happen. A broken nose, a cut to the face, or a graver injury, would usually do the trick. Connor’s ways were more subtle, but together they got the job done.

He was the heart and Connor was their soul. He felt so that Connor did not have to feel, acted out, so that Connor could have room to think more clearly.

He understood this with a clarity only a situation like this could force him to understand.

But Connor seemed to have known that from the start.

Looking at Connor these days made his heart beat in a way it had never, ever done.

He moved his arm out of the way and looked back down at his game of chess.

Sometimes he felt short of breath when Connor entered their cell, asked him, as he had taken to doing, if all was right with him.

He would say “Aye,” but he would be unable to say much more, lying there looking into his brother’s pale eyes, unable to think while Connor stared down at him.

At night it was easier. But days were much longer.

Therefore, the hardest thing about prison for him became the days.

Still, he found his ways.

At the end of the day, after they were done with yard exercise and while everyone else was watching a programme on TV, he got Connor alone.

In a back room in the laundry section, he stood while Connor sat on a steel table with his back against the wall, watching the entrance.

He had secured the time alone, paying a guard to be on the lookout on their behalf. It was common sense that Connor still wanted to be their own lookout, but at that moment he was willing to risk discovery by just about anybody.

He stood before Connor, leaned a hand on the wall beside his head and planted a soft kiss on Connor’s mouth.

One side of Connor’s mouth went up. It was a half smile. His eyes looked tired.

So he lowered his mouth to Connor’s ear and whispered to him in Gaelic. Now Connor went so far as to twitch with a smile. Connor’s eyes lifted slowly, caught his.

He felt his heart thud in his chest, and he looked hungrily at his brother, trying to slow down his racing heart.

Once, when he was seventeen, he had asked Connor whether Connor loved him, and Connor had given him some bullshit reply. A smart-ass answer.

He had been young and hadn’t appreciated the fineness with which Connor had gotten out of the corner he had trapped him in. He had been young, and hadn’t appreciated the fineness with which Connor moved through the world.

But here he understood it. And he also understood that Connor did it all for him, because he had to.

It was the best, most gallant thing a person could do for someone he loved.

So, while Connor sat there holding him by the waist, tired but going on, he took the time to do something he seldom did in the outside world. He took the time to express his gratitude to his brother. He kissed him on the mouth and told him in Gaelic, “You are my hero.”

Connor sat motionless for a few moments. Then he softly, wonderfully smugly, replied, “You hafta tell me the things I _don’t_ know, Murph.”

_End_


End file.
